Daniel Hannan on the remarkable — but somehow unknown to many — fact that the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka Nazi party) were actually socialists:
‘I am a Socialist,’ Hitler told Otto Strasser in 1930, ‘and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow’.
No one at the time would have regarded it as a controversial statement. The Nazis could hardly have been more open in their socialism, describing themselves with the same terminology as our own SWP: National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Almost everyone in those days accepted that fascism had emerged from the revolutionary Left. Its militants marched on May Day under red flags. Its leaders stood for collectivism, state control of industry, high tariffs, workers’ councils. Around Europe, fascists were convinced that, as Hitler told an enthusiastic Mussolini in 1934, ‘capitalism has run its course’.
One of the most stunning achievements of the modern Left is to have created a cultural climate where simply to recite these facts is jarring. History is reinterpreted, and it is taken as axiomatic that fascism must have been Right-wing, the logic seemingly being that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists were nasty. You expect this level of analysis from Twitter mobs; you shouldn’t expect it from mainstream commentators.
I maintain that the Left has a big bucket labelled Right Wing. They throw everything that is unpopular into it even their own bad decisions.
Comment by Wallhouse Wart — November 30, 2013 @ 10:59
More than that WW, the “progressive” will label anything they disagree with as both right wing and fascist. The the possibility that fascism is actually a socialist political movement doesn’t cross their minds because the Nazi’s and the Italian fascists were evil. Not to mention that Stalin, Mao, Castro, and every other socialist regime in history has been evil some how does not enter the picture! Cognitive dissonance is a hallmark of the “progressive” mind. I feel sorry for them, as they seem to have intelligence but their compassion and feelings overwhelm them and they make stupid decisions based on them. The laws of unintended consequences don’t enter their minds as they spend until they run out of other people’s money. Mind you, it has been shown that the “progressives” are also the least likely to donate to causes, but most likely to support huge social programs run through taxes that a lot of them can minimize because they are rich enough to use the system.
Comment by Dwayne — November 30, 2013 @ 15:25